‘OUT OF CONTROL’

Shadowbox Live will present
Out of Control at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Fridays
and Saturdays (except May 2-3) through May 31 at 503 S. Front St. Tickets cost $25 to $40, or $20
to $35 for students, senior citizens and active military personnel. Call 614-416-7625 or visit
shadowboxlive.org.

The title of Shadowbox Live’s latest is
Out of Control; the show is anything but. With sly ferocity and slick humor, a solid
troupe of performers attacks a quick series of songs and sketches that range from the raunchy to
the sharply political, with enough detours into the sheerly goofy to keep the mood light.

Many of the well-honed sketches make good use of ensembles of players who take advantage of long
experience together to fine-tune their comic timing.

In one, a beleaguered anger-management consultant (Edelyn Parker) is driven to distraction by a
quartet of reprobates, including Julie Klein’s enthusiastic new feminist and Stacie Boord’s office
worker who has honed passive-aggressiveness into a fine art.

In another, an enthusiastic substitute gym teacher (David Whitehouse) tries to conduct a class
for a group of fifth-grade boys, only to discover with increasing aggravation that all his
suggestions have been deemed either unsafe or politically incorrect.

The evening’s big final sketch puts the women of the troupe on display, as four preteen terrors,
including a feisty Klein and a terrifyingly twerking Boord, encouraged by their equally outrageous
mothers, compete in
Child Idol to the consternation of emcee Jimmy Mak.

Other sketches highlight comic duos. Mak and Whitehouse make a droll couple as the liberal dads
of a possibly conservative daughter, while Mak and J.T. Walker III take a briskly diverting look at
one of the wonders of technology, and Tom Cardinal and Boord a sardonic one at the aftereffects of
reality television.

The usual videos interspersed through the show are spottier than the rest of the evening: Those
featuring Jim Andes as “the drunkest man in the world” — in a parody of the Dos Equis man — hit the
mark, but rambling behind-the-scenes videos about how over-stretched the Shadowbox Live team is are
less amusing.

Although Shadowbox Live has long had a solid group of female singers, in this show, the men give
them a run for their money. John Boyd is impressively dynamic at
American Idiot, Jamie Barrow appropriately rough-edged in
Stoned Drunk & Naked, Brandon Anderson gritty in
Fortunate Son, Cardinal nuanced in
Driven to Tears and Walker playfully exuberant in
All Star, where he is ably supported by Anderson and Boyd.

That is not to say that the women don’t have their moments: Nikki Fagin crafts a powerful
narrative out of Pink’s
Sober, and Boord, backed by video images, gives stunning clarity to Prince’s
Sign O the Times.

The house band is in good form throughout the evening, with guitarists Matthew Hahn and Brent
Lambert given a real chance to shine in the final number, along with Klein on Molly Hatchet’s
Flirtin’ with Disaster.

Its language and humor definitely earn the show an adult rating. Fortunately, it’s also adult in
its intelligence and sophistication.